


by Bird and Book

by incandescent (lmeden)



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, Genderbending, Non-Linear Narrative, Resurrection, Yuletide 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 12:02:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lmeden/pseuds/incandescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All roads end in death, even the King's Roads. Wherein the Raven King gathers his servants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	by Bird and Book

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/gifts).



> Dear Lanna, I hope you enjoy this Yuletide gift. I was wildly inspired by your prompt and wrote like a madwoman to finish this. I believe I incorporated many of your prompts, including but not limited to: origin/backstory fics, wacky magical shenanigans, the Raven King as a total troll, defriending, and female!Raven King. This is set within the original timeline of the story, and I worked really hard to keep this as historically accurate as possible without delving into pastiche. Alas, this is not an LJ!AU.
> 
> An enormous THANK YOU goes out to my betas R and N, who read this thing and offered the most exacting criticism as to character and anachronisms and plot details. I cannot thank you enough for your help.
> 
> Lastly, I hope you fall as deeply in love with this story as I have.

 

I.

 

Catherine of Winchester is occupied observing the waning sliver of the moon from the window of her study, leaning upon her desk with her chin in her hands, when the sound of wings in the east garden catches her attention. She leans forward for a better look.

There is a man standing in her garden, knee-deep in the thyme and rosemary. He wears braies of a fleshy color and a strangely-cut, dark surcoat that clings close to his torso and splits at the back, falling to mid-thigh. His hair appears to be black and bound close to the head, quite unfashionably so. He is staring at the moon.

Frowning, Catherine pushes back from the heavy wood of her desk and stands. She inherited her small house years ago and despite the fact that the serfs in the village go out of their way to inform her of their disapproval of her lonely lifestyle, the small spells that she has taught herself in the years since her father’s death have been more than enough to convince them to leave her alone.

She does not receive visitors.

She checks the knot of her belt and the tightness of her plaits, which often work themselves loose after a long day and droop to her shoulders. They brush against the leaves of the herbs hanging half-dried from her ceiling as she heads for the door.

Her leather shoes wait for her there and she toes them on, unmindful of the laces. She leaves her mantle hanging from its hook; the nights are not so cold yet that she will need it. Her heart thumps in time with her feet and she reviews the execution of spells with the greater part of her thoughts.

She reaches for the outer door, lifting the latch and shoving her hip against it to force it open. The hinges squeal and she winces. A glance into the garden beyond shows that her visitor is still there, and has not even glanced towards her.

The door gapes wide behind her as she gathers the skirt of her gown to her knees to better creep past reaching stalks. She knows several spells which might help disguise her presence, but if she is right in suspecting that this is a Fae creature, it is likely that casting such would alert him to her presence faster than if she screamed.

Five paces more and he turns on his heel; Catherine is shocked to her bones to see that he is not a man at all.

“Good lady,” she says, voice fainter than she wishes but back nonetheless straight, “Are you in need of assistance?”

The woman’s braies really are cut indecently close to her legs and her surcoat is open completely at the front, revealing a loose shirt of purest white that has been gathered at the throat into a complex knot. Her hair looks to be very long indeed, and is secured at the back of her neck in a thick, pinned plait.

Her wide-set eyes watch Catherine for a long moment. “No, thank you,” she says, her voice all smoke and winter musk. “I believe I have found what I was looking for. Are you the Lady Catherine?”

Catherine’s gown slips from her grasp, hem falling onto the dirt path of the garden. “I am,” she admits, dipping her chin in acknowledgement. “Might I have the honor of your name?” Catherine wraps the cord of her belt around her fingers. The spell within, woven between strands of flax and hemp, warms in her grasp. The Fae army that invaded the North almost a century before has left its traces on the entirety of England. Despite the fact that Winchester lies far to the South, she has heard tales of the Fairies being sighted all across the land. If this is the creature she suspects, then she will have to be doubly careful of what she says.

The woman turns a mildly reproving gaze upon Catherine. It rests heavy for a long moment before she blinks. She lifts a pale, long-fingered hand. “Come, Catherine of Winchester,” she says. “You are summoned.”

Catherine allows no part of her to move but her chest with her breath. The weight of the darkness is heavy upon her; the moon is but a sliver. Now is not the opportune time to step out of this world, especially if one is called so directly. She will need the moon’s power to keep her safe, and tonight it is weak.

Could this possibly be one of the Fae whom the Raven King holds no mastery over?

“Perhaps another night,” she says, tongue dry. “You have caught me in the midst of a spell that I cannot step away from.”

The woman’s hand beckons, empty and open, for her grasp. Catherine grounds herself in the land beneath her, feeling the roots of her herbs beneath her toes and, deeper, the sluggish veins of fire that warm the loamy soil. She will not leave England tonight.

Then the woman is turning away, her dark gaze lifting. “I shall return,” she cautions. “When the time is more opportune, and your spells are not waiting.” She glances back to Catherine, and Catherine knows that the woman is aware of her deception – that there are no spells waiting, nothing that needs doing in the quiet hour of the night.

Her toes itch to step forwards, her fingers to feel that cool touch. But Catherine knows better; she is the mistress of this base desire, and will not fall prey to the petty longing that so often overcomes those magicians who succumb to Faerie. The Raven King may live far to the North, but she grew up listening to tales of himself and his servants. She will not trap herself in Faerie for fourteen years like Thomas of Dundale, to return changed and half-mad. 

She will remain herself, and remain in Winchester.

“Do not bother,” she says with a burst of courage, “unless you bring your name as well as your summons.”

She glances up to the woman and finds only emptiness and night air where the phantom had stood. The moonlight falls through the space where she had been, glamour dispelled, and Catherine winds her belt tighter around her fingers until she feels the tips begin to tingle; only then does she turn her back to the night and head back inside, to her books and her herbs, the cold stone and black ink of a reasonable magician.

 

-

 

She is on the threshold of the church when she sees the Fairy a second time. This time it is midmorning and the creature is standing in the central aisle, halfway to the altar.

Catherine stops and stares, utterly taken aback by the sight. The creature is dressed as a woman today, and is just as beautiful as she had been three nights before. Her gown is cut from a rich, dark fabric that pools at her feet and her mantle shines black with what appears to be feathers. Her black hair is swept up and plaited, tucked into a plain hat neatly and precisely.

When her gaze lights upon Catherine, her lips tug upward into a smile.

Her mouth shapes Catherine’s name silently, yet Catherine nearly hears the syllables. She shudders, jolted into movement, and steps inside, glancing away from the Fairy and across the pews. She heads for her accustomed spot and tries to pretend that all is normal, searching her memories in vain for a working that will not disturb everyone else who has come for the service.

The other worshippers nod to her as she passes and she forces a smile in response.  
A hand on her arm draws her back. Catherine turns and looks up into the Fairy’s gaze.

The smile on the Fairy’s face is small and pleased. Catherine fights the urge to yank her arm back. They walk together down the aisle towards the women’s seats.

“What do you want?” Catherine hisses under her breath. As they approach the nave, she nods slightly in respect and then turns. After an instant’s hesitation, the Fairy does the same and moves with her.

“I simply wished,” the Fairy says, “to convey an invitation.”

Catherine’s eyes flash as she stops and looks up. “From _whom_?” Her tone is sharp, and far from pleased.

“That is not important at this moment. I need only know whether you will accept or not.” She settles into the seat next to Catherine and looks over to her, brushing the loose tail of one of her plaits over her shoulder.

“Of course not!” Catherine hisses with as much venom as she can conjure. “Who in their right mind would run off with an unnamed Fairy whose intentions are entirely suspicious? If the King were here, he’d send you scampering off in an instant.” She bites her tongue as soon as the words slip from her mouth. She should not have threatened the creature – the King rules his kingdoms far to the North, and would never come to the aid of a country magician.

The Fairy is not offended. Instead, a broad smile spreads across her face and a dark light sparks in her eyes.

“How lovely and fierce you are,” she whispers. “The _King_ has no power over me.”

On her last word the organ player presses down on his first note, and the air is filled with a deep, resonant music. Startled, Catherine turns to see the processional beginning.

When she looks back, the Fairy is gone.

 

-

 

“Wouldst thou,” the Fairy says, toes upon her lintel and hair piled high upon the top of her head, “accompany me to a dance?”

Catherine takes a step back at the informality of the address and makes to swing the door closed.

The Fairy moves forward, sliding her palm along the rough wood of the door and stopping its movement with barely an effort. Catherine lets go and moves away from her.

“Do not flee so fast, Lady Catherine,” the Fairy says lightly. “You have not even heard what kind of dance I am inviting you to.”

“I don’t need to know,” Catherine snaps. She stops moving and holds her ground. “I’m not going with you. Get out.” She will defend herself tonight, and invoke no one else.

The Fairy’s outfit has changed yet again. Today she is wearing a pair of loose trousers that fall straight from the hip to the ankle, with a sharp line down the front and a fold at the bottom. She wears a linen shirt of the purest white, which shines in the moonlight streaming in through Catherine’s still-open front door. Flecks of reflected light on the front of the shirt reveal its fastenings, and it is tucked into the tight waist of the trousers. Her black hair is pinned to the top of her head as an intricate mass and her thin wrists are on display past the rolled cuffs of the shirt.

Catherine feels her cheeks heat as she watches the Fairy move in her strange clothes, reaching out with long, delicate fingers, her accentuated waist shifting with each movement.

“Please accept my invitation,” The Fairy says. “I solemnly swear that as long as tonight’s moon is shining, you will return to this place unharmed.”

Catherine’s traitorous gaze drifts to the slim window cut into the wall of her home. Outside, the moon is nearly full, heavy and wide in the dark sky. Catherine need not even light a single candle tonight, it is so bright.

She turns back to the Fairy, whose gaze meets hers with a smile lurking at the corner of her eyes.

“You are not going to stop, are you?” Catherine asks. It has been nearly three fortnights since the Fairy began appearing to Catherine, and each time she has asked Catherine to honor this mysterious invitation. Each time she appears wearing a different style of dress - sometimes in styles impossibly archaic, and other times wearing clothing that is so foreign as to make Catherine’s heart beat faster. “What are you planning? You said that the King holds no power over you, but I think that that is not possible, given that you walk his lands. What is he planning? Cast Winter out again and plunge us into an unending Summer? Or perhaps he will hide the moon from us once more. Whatever this is, I will have no part in it.” 

She begins to swing the door closed on the Fairy; most of the tales she has heard of the Raven King took place years before her birth, but the thought of the kind of magic that those tales contain sends shiver through her. She is a minor magician - were she to become involved in such a working, it would destroy her utterly.

“These lands belong the human called Henry,” says the Fairy as she gestures vaguely. “One of the Henrys - I can never recall which. The Raven King has no dominion here. Why do you say that I come under his banner?”

“All Fairies come from the King,” Catherine snaps. “Stop this. Just leave me be.”

“Not until you agree to come with me,” the Fairy replies, smiling.

“Damn,” Catherine sighs. It is true that the brightness of tonight’s moon guarantees her some security. But not enough. “If I am to go with you, you must swear an oath.”

The Fairy’s eyes spark strangely. “And what kind of oath would that be?” Her voice has dropped low. 

“Swear by the King’s Raven that I will return to this precise place before the sun rises tomorrow morning, and no later. Swear that no greater time will pass in Faerie than in this human world, and that you will not seek to entrap or ensorcell me while I move through Faerie.” It is not _her_ King that the Fairy owes fealty to, after all; it would be useless to ask the creature to swear by the Southron King’s lions. 

“That is a heavy vow,” the Fairy says, brows rising. But she barely hesitates. “By Bird and Book, I do so swear.” She pauses. “To do all you’ve asked of me.”

Catherine pauses in surprise. The Fairy may have just tied herself to more than she had wanted - now, Catherine may ask almost anything of her and expect to have it done. 

But the vow itself is odd. “By Bird and Book…” she echoes. “What kind of vow is that?”

The Fairy smiles mischievously, leaning forward over the doorstep. “A strange one,” the creature admits. “To a man who has not yet been born, to a man who will never die, and to a kingdom that will never be forgotten. It is more binding than swearing by a single Raven, I’ve found.” She lifts a hand as if beckoning, and Catherine almost hears the flap of a thousand winds carried upon the breeze. 

“Let’s get this over with,” she bites out, recognizing that she will not win this battle. She reaches down and lifts the hem of her gown, exposing her stockinged toes. “If you will let me get my shoes.”

She turns halfway, but the Fairy grasps her arm to stop her. “There is no need for footwear, Lady,” she says. “Not where we are going.” She steps back, and her gentle grip on Catherine proves impossible to break. Catherine moves after her cautiously, and they step over the threshold into the moonlight.

The Fairy is as beautiful as ever. The white light illuminates her profile and smooth skin, not a single imperfection revealed by the moon’s cleansing power.

Only when they are halfway through Catherine’s garden does she finally let her grip relax and slips her hands into pockets cunningly cut into the sides of her trousers. She walks smoothly over the uneven ground. The darkness of her hair swallows the light in places and in others shines like black feathers.

“Where _are_ we going?” Catherine asks, trying for a casual tone. She hopes she is wrong to assume that they are going to Faerie. 

“I would not worry, were I you,” the Fairy says. Her tone is light and lilting, so much more at ease now that Catherine has agreed to walk with her. It almost makes Catherine turn back then and there.

It is then that she notices that the trees around them have changed. They are no longer the oaks and firs that border her garden and lands, but flora much more foreign. The trunks are dark and gnarled, curling up toward the sky to reach out for the moon.

Catherine glances down and sees that the path has changed from the familiar and thin line of packed dirt to a wider, stone-laid path. The stones are smooth and shine with a silvered grey, like the metal of a well-used sword.

“Faerie,” she whispers to herself.

The Fairy is beside her suddenly. She reaches out to grasp Catherine’s arm and lead her on. “Indeed, my Lady. But we are only passing through.”

She quickens her pace. Catherine looks up and fastens her gaze on the gibbous moon. As long as she fixes her gaze on that rotund lady, she need not fear deception.

They walk for a long time in silence, and for a time Catherine forgets where they are.

Then lips press tight to her ear. “We are back in human lands,” the Fairy whispers into her ear.

Catherine jerks back and away. Her neck cries out with pain and she winces, turning upon the Fairy. “What are you doing?”

The Fairy’s smile is small. “You seemed so intent,” she demurs. “I thought it best to speak quietly lest I frighten you.”

Catherine draws back, pulling her arm from the Fairy’s grip completely and pulling into herself. She feels her muscles tighten and her skin chill. She should not have followed; it was unspeakably foolish.

It takes her a long moment to realize that the sound in her ears is the pounding of waves, that the feeling that vibrates through her toes is not her own nervousness but rather the proximity of the sea. She has been near the sea once before, when she was a child, and not since.

Catherine strides forward and stops, staring out over the glassy surface of the sea and the reflected moon. “It’s lovely,” she says, caught utterly off guard. “But…” She turns and looks at the Fairy. “The sea is a day’s travel from my home! How long were we walking?”

She resists the urge to look down at her feet; they do not hurt. Whatever magic the Fairy worked upon her must have preserved her health. But that does not make sense. The power of the moon should have helped free her from enchantment. Except, perhaps, from the most powerful kind.

“Not long,” the Fairy says with a haughty toss of her head. “I simply wished to show you this.” She moves forward, gaze fixed on a point far past Catherine.

“The sea?” Catherine looks back out towards it, then pauses. _No. Her power._ “You swore by Bird and Book to have me back by the morning.” Her tongue stumbles over the unfamiliar oath; perhaps it is a worthless phrase after all.

“We will be. Just look.” The Fairy pauses. “Do you see the lights out there?”

Startled, Catherine looks out into the darkness past the glinting of the moonlight on the waves, until she spies the small flecks of light in the black, far in the distance, all clustered together.

Brow furrowing, she says, “Yes. But what are they?”

“A ship.” The Fairy’s length is pressed close to Catherine, and she feels very warm indeed, not unlike a human at all.

“That’s impossible,” Catherine says distantly. “No vessel could carry lights so bright. Those must be… bonfires, to see them at such a distance.” Her interest peaked, the warmth beside her fades to the back of her thoughts.

The Fairy laughs lowly. “Not impossible at all.” Her long fingers wrap around Catherine’s shoulder and she pulls, tugging her around so that her back is to the sea. “Now look upon the town.”

Catherine gasps – how could she have missed this before? They stand on a hillside, and the land below is filled with lights; warm, bright pinpricks pierce the darkness, clustered together to form the outline of houses and illuminate the corners of streets. They are beautiful and unearthly.

“Is this the North? Are we in the Raven King’s city?” She cannot imagine anywhere else that would appear so. She has heard that John Uskglass was raised within Faerie - of course his domain would be as mysterious and beautiful as that illicit land. 

The Fairy laughs. “This is not my home, no. This is a town called Porlock Vale, near the Royal Forest of Exmoor. And it is eight hundred years after the day when your life will end.”

A chill runs down Catherine’s spine, utterly wiping from her mind the Fairy’s admission that she has come from the Raven King. This is… the future? She rounds upon the Fairy pulling away. “You _lie_ ,” she hisses.

“To you,” the Fairy says, somber gravity alighting upon her face, “I would never speak falsely.” She spreads her hands away from her body as if pleading Catherine to believe her.

Heart pounding in her chest, Catherine does. The earth beneath her toes feels strange and wrong; the life within it is sluggish and flows only in fits and starts. Catherine extends her sense towards it, but it flinches away from her.

So. The future. There is no escape from this magic.

Afraid of what the Fairy will say next, she lets the silence stretch between them. Eventually her gaze falls to rest on the black earth at her feet, and she curls her toes into it.

She can feel everything nearby - the sturdy roots of the trees that grow a short distance away, the rhythmic, surging power of the sea itself, the lives of the tiny creatures that live within the dirt. There is some purity in the nature around her to focus on.

“Lady Catherine,” the Fairy says, “do you accept my invitation?”

Catherine looks up into her dark gaze, which is so close to her own. “Do I have any choice?” she asks.

To her shame, tears prick at the corners of her eyes and she blinks quickly to force them away.

“No,” the Fairy says, her face very still and cold, “you do not. Though you do not have to worry – we will not visit this time again.”

She steps forward, pressing close to Catherine and wrapping a hand around each of her arms. She presses her cheek to Catherine’s cheek and her lips to Catherine’s ear and _sighs_ , a sound full of depth and yearning, which drags Catherine down into the darkness with it.

 

-

 

She awakes in bed, the familiar stones of her home arching above her head. As she blinks to wakefulness, she stops breathing for a second and just listens, but cannot hear the sound of waves. She is truly home, then.

A violent shudder of relief moves through her.

She rolls to her side and pushes herself up, using one hand to scrub across her face. The sensation of the gown she still wears causes her to grimace - the linen is crinkled and the hem encrusted with mud. Obviously she had been brought home and simply left, with no care for her person. On the other hand, she is not comfortable with the thought of the Fairy magicking her out of her day clothes and into her nightdress.

The whisper of paper against paper comes from across the room. Catherine starts at the tiny sound and looks up, wide-eyed, to see the Fairy sitting in the low chair near her desk on the other side of the room. The low-hanging herbs that she’s been drying seem like the roots of an arcane tree, growing through the ceiling above them.

She gapes for a long moment at the slim figure in the chair. The Fairy’s face is shadow, the tendrils of dark hair that have escaped from its pins trail around her neck like ropes.

“What do you want?” Catherine’s voice is a dry rasp. She swallows around it, but cannot force any further words out. “Why did you not take me earlier?”

The Fairy’s face is hidden by the shadows, so Catherine cannot make out her expression.

“I want,” the Fairy says, voice deep as the grinding of stones beneath the earth, and just as rough, “for you to accept my invitation.”

The realization takes a long moment to hit Catherine.

“Your invitation? I thought you--”

“Had come at the behest of another?” The Fairy leaning forward, into the scant moonlight that illuminates the room. “You made that perfectly clear. Yet it is I whom I wish for you to swear fealty to.”

Catherine’s eye widen; the creature requires a _binding oath_. What madness must have overtaken her, to think that Catherine would ever acquiesce to such a request from a creature not of this world? Her gaze darts around the room. Is this even the same night as the one that they left on? How long has the Fairy held her captive? 

Hadn’t she already agreed to the Fairy, when she’d followed her across kingdoms and time unknown?

Perhaps not as such. The Fairy left her no choice but to follow, when she’d brought Catherine to the future. But Catherine has not said _yes_. She might yet find a way out of this.

“I come and go by my own will, Catherine,” the Fairy snaps, sounding for the first time truly annoyed.

Catherine braces herself and swings her legs off the bed. “Then what _willed_ you to come to me?” She attempts to put iron into her voice, but if afraid that she manages only steel.

The Fairy settles back in her seat once more and regards Catherine from the darkness for a long moment. When she finally speaks, it is with a profound relish.  
“Catherine of Winchester, you are to be the strongest magician of this age. I have need of your power and wisdom for a spell which I am crafting.”

Catherine cannot help it - she throws her head back and laughs. “You _are_ mad! You cannot have missed the Raven King! I am far from the most powerful magician in England.” The thought that this creature has considered her, and her meagre powers, to be worthy of notice is ludicrous. 

The Fairy’s thin smile gleams even from the shadows. “I have not _missed_ the King, I assure you. There are circumstances that prohibit his involvement at this time. I came for you instead.”

Catherine’s smile dies. “You are serious.” She pauses. “I am afraid that I cannot be of use to you. I am not what you think I am.”

“Oh.” The Fairy stands, then, and makes her way across the room in three long strides. Catherine stands but does not manage to get away from her own bedside before the Fairy reaches her and lifts a hand. As soon as it touches her cheek, she freezes, caged by the power that flows outward from that unearthly palm.

“You are not the Lady of Winchester?” the Fairy asks. “Mistress of the earth and air? Are you not so in touch with the land beneath you that you can feel a death from miles away, and predict a shift in the earth’s deepest stones days in advance? I would have you as my servant.”

That is all true, but it is not great power. “You do not want _me_ ,” Catherine insists. No one ever has. What value could she possibly be?

“Of course I do,” the Fairy whispers. Her breath is hot across Catherine’s cheek and her hand slips low to curl around the back of Catherine’s neck, her fingers working up into Catherine’s hair. “Without you, I will be nothing. You will swear my vows.”

_What?_

Catherine does not have the chance to ask her question, for just then the Fairy kisses her, pressing her lips to Catherine’s and seizing at her hair sharply.

“Ah!” Catherine arches back, trying to draw away, and only succeeds in allowing the Fairy to press close to her and slip her tongue into Catherine’s mouth.

Catherine falls to her mattress, the tick inside cushioning her fall only halfway. Breath whooshes out of her and she gasps. The Fairy climbs onto the bed on top of her, and the wooden frames groans at the unaccustomed weight. Catherine has never brought anyone back to her home before; she always sleeps alone.

Hands press her shoulders down into the mattress, and the Fairy follows with her mouth, pulling the neck of Catherine’s gown low expose her collarbones. She bares her teeth and bites the delicate skin there, nipping just hard enough to cause Catherine to shiver.

“What are you doing?” she hisses. “Why--”

“You cannot know,” the Fairy whispers against her skin, “but you will.”

Catherine’s brow furrows. The Fairy’s fingers work at the knot of her belt, loosening it until the rope itself slips from around her waist. She begins to tug at Catherine’s gown, exposing her skin to the cool night air.

“Does this have something to do with--,” she says. “ _Oh._ ”

The Fairy pushes her fingers up under her skirt and across the worn fabric of Catherine’s loincloth. She twitches, the muscles deep within her tightening and sparking with sensation. _Oh._

“You are powerful,” the Fairy whispers, “filled with the force of life itself and the world around you. You _glow_ with it.” She pressed her fingers against the hair between Catherine’s legs and then slips her fingers back farther, between the folds of Catherine’s flesh.

Catherine’s hands grasp at the Fairy, tugging at the fabric of her soft white shirt. Her toes twitch against the fabric of her stockings and she bends her knees, drawing in toward the touch of the Fairy, her warmth. The Fairy’s dark hair tumbles down, trailing across the bare skin of her neck.

The Fairy’s hair smells of crisp leaves and smoke, and her skin of the musk of silk, though Catherine only touched the fabric once, when she was little. She breathes in the scent now and feels herself going tender, the flesh of her inner thighs shaking as she draws herself in, presses up toward the Fairy.

She is kissed again, the Fairy’s tongue snaking into her mouth as her long fingers move inside Catherine. Her legs open, knees spreading wide and she arches up into the Fairy.

The Fairy presses against the inside of Catherine, sending a jolt of pleasure through her. She feels herself pressing down into the Fairy’s touch, hips rolling. Her feet brace themselves against the mattress and she bears down. She reaches up, wrapping her arms around the Fairy and pulling that slim body to her.

The Fairy’s breasts press against her own, soft flesh to counter the jolts of intense feeling that move through her. She kisses the Fairy back desperately, opening her mouth to take the creature deeper. The Fairy tastes of ice and a sharp wind, and her tongue is very mobile.

Catherine feels herself tighten, her muscles clenching further and further. She cannot control her movements. She feels something within her open like a window flying wide - beneath her is nothing but darkness and the beating of black wings. She feels herself shudder and arch upward.

The Fairy shifts above her, not with her muscles but something deeper; Catherine feels a magic that is simultaneously familiar and foreign surge. The Fairy’s fingers leave her, to be replaced by something much thicker and longer. The Fairy’s body presses her down, heavy and sharp against her softness. The creature has changed, shifted into something else entirely.

The Fairy’s hips hitch against Catherine. She cries out at the sensation, the sudden pressure inside her. The darkness within her shifts as if dark waters part, and Catherine seizes, pleasure jolting through her to her very bones and sending arcs of sensation through her.

“Lady Catherine,” the creature whispers into her ear, his voice deepened and rougher than before. He curls a calloused hand around the back of her neck as he slips out of her. She gasps at the movement and nearly sobs at feeling so empty. “Will you swear yourself to me?”

Her hands still grasp at the man’s shirt. She pants against him, feeling the hard planes of his chest against her breasts. She knows his name, finally, but cannot bear to whisper it aloud.

The aftershocks of the magic that he has worked shudder through her. She lets her eyes fall closed and holds him close for a long moment, letting his heat work its way inside of her.

Yes,” she finally says. “By Bird and Book, I swear to serve you.” The words slip from her tongue, unconsidered and fluid. She pauses, stiffening at the strangeness of them, and then realizes that they are the _right_ words.

_What have I sworn myself to serve?_

“Good. I will return for you soon,” he says, pressing her back again and taking her mouth with his. 

Exhausted, she arches up against him, then gasps as her touch meets nothing at all. Her eyes fly wide and she sits, wincing at the sensations inside of her.

The King is gone, and his ravens with him. Nothing but moonlight and silence remains.

 

-

 

 

II.

 

He’s just stepped out of Mass when he sees the god standing upon the field. 

William’s hand convulses around his prayer book, fingers clenching in reaction to the sudden thudding of his heart. 

The tall man holds a walking stick carved from the pale, spindly wood of the cypress. The silver pin at the neck of his doublet is shaped into the form of an intricate key, and his eyes are a startlingly pale blue, brighter even than the vault of the sky. William can feel the way the magic of the land moves around him, drawn to the man as the moon to the night. He may be a poor magician, but he can tell that much.

William moves to the side, out of the way of the other parishioners, and towards the god. He has always known that he would see one of the old ones one day, ever since he read the ancient tales as a small child. Though he has since learned much, his belief that the gods are real and will come when needed has never left him. 

He pushes back the niggling thought that, if the god has come to him now, something beyond his comprehension is on the horizon.

As William steps down, off the steps of Lanchester’s small church and toward the moor, the god’s gaze shifts to meets his. The god remains still and silent as William approaches, as unmoving as a statue. William steps across the battered dirt of the path before the church and over the low stone wall that marks the beginning of the pasture without daring to take his eyes from the figure before him. He feels a splash of cold wetness – likely from the previous night’s rain - slip inside his leather shoes, but doesn’t even pause to grimace. 

“My Lord,” he calls as he approaches. “How may I serve you?”

The god’s eyes widen. “Serve?” he asks, his soft voice carried by the wind straight to William’s ears. “How strange. Few _choose_ to serve me.”

William closes the distance between them and stops a few steps away; it is best, he feels, not to push to close. 

“I will do all that I can,” William says, ducking his chin in the suggestion of a bow; he refuses to sink to his knees in the soggy grass, and can already feel his feet sinking with the thought that, despite his belief, this god might not want him. He shifts slightly. “Whatever you ask.”

The amusement shining in the god’s eyes turns to a grin. “Then, William of Lanchester, I ask of you a single boon.”

“Anything,” William says again. 

“Fetch for me the fruit of a tree that cannot grow without the support of another: one which is often found on high but whose only purpose is to bring its servant low.” The god shifts, turning away from William. 

_A riddle_. William’s eyes fly wide. “Wait! Can I not have any further clues?” He had not been expecting a _word game_ , of all things. If anything, he’d thought that the god would be rather… specific and exact. And perhaps prone to punishing misunderstandings. 

“I have given you all that you need,” the god says. “I will give you until the dark of the moon to complete this task.” The god walks away, and William sees that the back of his coat is covered from neck to hem with black feathers. 

William opens his mouth and then snaps it shut, nearly biting his tongue. He glances back over his shoulder at the church that acts as the center of town; its heavy, stone presense looms at his back. He cannot give up, now that he’s offered his help; he’s always been led to believe that gods are not generally the forgiving sort. 

“At least tell me why you’ve chosen me!” he cries, turning. But the god is not there. 

There is only the empty earth before him, deceptively free of obstacles, its surface covered by a wispy, tattered mist. 

 

-

 

The dark of the moon will come in four days. 

William consults his almanac and grimaces sourly. He has no idea where to begin; he must find fruit, but of what kind he has no idea, and the clues he has been given seem strangely adaptable and vague. 

_One which is found on high, and whose only purpose is to bring its servants low_. 

He sighs and leaning back, pressing against his eyes. 

As he sits, leaning back on the rear feet of his chair and mourning his sudden and inexplicable doom, he hears a peculiar sound. 

It is almost like the flap of wings, as if a thousand birds are rushing by the window outside his room, their wings beating the wind to pieces and their feathers rubbing gently against the quills of their brothers. He frowns, blinded still by his hands, and then rocks forward, the feet of his chair landing on the floor with a thud and his eyes opening. 

The sound stops as suddenly as a clap of thunder, and William cannot find anything amiss. He leans forward and grasps the windowsill, pulling himself toward the aperture. He shoves his head out into the air and looks around. 

Not a single bird in sight. How odd. 

Pushing the strangeness out of his mind, he re-enters his room and sits again. He tries to focus his brain upon the puzzle he’s been given, but can’t focus. It’s as if he’s a child again, and his parents are trying to force him to learn his letters. 

He’d always hated how father had drilled him upon each sign in the words, “In the beginning”. William and his father had spent _weeks_ upon that simple phrase, pouring over the words again and again, until Joseph of Lanchester had felt that his son was finally suited for learning the rest of the words in the Bible. It had been a tedious, exhausting process. It wasn’t until he’d discovered a small book of ancient tales that he’d really discovered the joy that could be contained within words.

Sighing, William lets his gaze travel through the room idly, over books piled high upon floor and bed, under the window and on top of his desk, collected there as if he could ever, and will ever, read them all. 

The spine of one catches his eyes, etched as it is with the imprint of leaves and berries. He leans forward and grasps it, pulling it into his lap. 

It is a heavy tome, bound in sheepskin and etched with a roughness that points to the craftsmanship of hand, and a limited printing indeed. The title is in bold and intricate script, likely from the time when such styling was fashionable. William grimaces and squints at the letters. It takes him long moments to work out the words. 

_GEWRIT ON SE DÉAþCWALA ÁTORCYNNUM OND ÆLWIHTA SYLFUM NORðEFES ANGELþÉOD_

Deadly plants? William’s heart quickens. This could be precisely what he needs to solve his puzzle. 

He reaches for the book and pauses; it isn’t the kind of manual that he would own, and as a matter of fact, he can’t recall in the slightest where he might have found it. Certainly it wasn’t given to him by his father. With a shrug, he lays his hand on the cover and pulls the wide binding open to reveal yellowed, creaking pages. It’s no matter where he got the book, though. The important thing is that it’s here. 

He may not be so doomed after all.

 

-

 

“Damned be all the gods and men,” William groans, craning his head back to catch sight of the mistletoe knotted high in the oak tree above him. He’ll have to climb up there in order to bring back the god’s fruit. And he’s never been able to lay claim to any kind of athleticism. He scowls down at the tree’s root, thinking furiously.

Well. Perhaps this need not be as tedious as he’d feared. 

He can work a spell to bring the tree down to him. He reaches out and lays a hand upon the trunk of the old creature, closing his eyes to better sense the life force running through it. The heat of the sunlight makes such sensing difficult. In the shadows of the evening, it would be much simpler and easier to complete this task. 

Hissing with frustration, he draws his hand back, trying to think again. If he can barely sense the tree’s life, he will surely be unable to ask it to bend down for him. He must find another way to retrieve the fruit. 

After a moment, he realizes that he could call up a wind to whip through the branches and yank the mistletoe from the stranglehold it has upon the oak’s branches. It is a small spell, but a small movement might be just what he needs. 

He reaches out and calls upon the wind with his mind, reciting the words of a spell that he has not used for months, but which is still familiar to him. The breeze picks up, plucking at his hair and causing the leaves above him to sigh with a quiet susurrus. 

The speed of the moving air increases, growing stronger and sharper. A chill runs through William and he shudders unwillingly, gritting his teeth to prevent distraction. Overhead, the branches rattle. 

And not a single berry falls. 

Well, _damn_. It’s almost as if the tree is resisting his attempts to pull down the mistletoe. Or someone is preventing his spell from having an effect. He turns on his heel, gaze sharp and wary as he looks for the god. Perhaps that creature has just been playing with him for its own ends. Of course, if this god is truly who William thinks that he is, he wouldn’t be surprised. 

The god is not there, snickering behind him. Instead there is a small boy, working outside one of the small houses on the edge of town. William eyes him for a second before a brilliant idea comes to him. 

“Oi!” He cries, an unusual bellow. “Boy!” 

Far off, the boy jerks and looks up, spinning to gaze all around him. 

“Boy!” William calls again. He raises a hand and gestures, and the boy catches sight of him quickly. After a momentary pause, the boy begins to walk toward him. 

“Ah!” He’ll need something persuasive. He reaches into the purse at his belt and digs around, reaching for a small enough coin. Finally he drags out an entire penny and scowls at it.

“Yes?” The boy asks as he walks up. He runs his gaze over William warily. “Whatcha want?”

William smiles. “I have a penny for you if you’ll climb this tree for me and bring down a branch of that plant.”

The boy glances up into the tree and then back at William. “You want a tree branch. Can’t get one yourself?”

“Ah,” William says, trying for charming. “I don’t need just any tree branch.” He drops down into a crouch so that he’s at the boy’s level and points up through the oak branches, to the mistletoe. “I need a branch of _that_. Do you see it?”

The boy squints. “That little thing?” He glances back at William, brow furrowed. “And you’ll give me that penny for it?”

William nods. “Of course. As soon as I have the branch in my hand.” This way he’ll have more than one berry, and hopefully the god will be satisfied. 

The boy watches William’s smile for another skeptical moment and then moves toward the tree, scrambling easily up into the branches. Soon he is half obscured by the branches. 

William decides that some verbal encouragement would not be amiss. “Yes!” he calls. “Just there! One of those green branches! If you bring back a second I’ll give you another penny!” The last words slip out of his mouth unwarranted and he pauses, hand raised to shade his eyes from the bright sunlight above, and considers his purse. 

Does he even have two pennies? 

Quickly, he reaches down and checks. As second later he sighs in frustration. He’s just promised the boy two pennies, but all he has aside from that single coin is three silvers. 

With a soft thud, the boy drops out of the tree beside him and William looks up, caught. 

“Here, yr’ Lordship,” the boys says. He thrusts out his hand, two slim branches of mistletoe held in it. “I’ll have those two pennies now.”

William forces a smile. “You’ve done well,” he says, the word ground out between his teeth. “Have a silver instead.” He pulls the coin from his purse and gestures with it.

The boy’s eyes light up and he nearly drops the mistletoe in an effort to grab his newfound riches. William grabs the branches and clutches them gingerly to himself, allowing the boy to skip away. He glances down at the mistletoe in his grasp. 

The berries are tiny and red, and there are four of them dangling from the mangled branch. William sighs. 

Damn that god.

 

-

 

He waits outside his front door nervously, the mistletoe berries stored away in a small glass jar he’s shoved into a pocket on the inside of his coat. Above, the moon is a mere sliver of light glinting in the sky. 

William glances down at his shadow, drawn so long at his feet that it nearly vanishes into the darkness surrounding him. He has been waiting for several hours now for the god to show himself. 

He tugs his hand from his pocket and gestures angrily, invoking a half-remembered spell that distorts his own shadow and sends it walking away from his feet on its own volition. The shadow mimes a lewd gesture and he grimaces, more annoyed than when he’d begun. The small magic does not distract him as it had years before, and so he lets it go, and his shadow slinks back toward the heels of his shoes. 

“Clever,” comes a rough voice from beside him. “Is that a spell of your own crafting?”

William starts bodily and looks up into the god’s dark gaze; he is hardly taller than William at all, but his presence feels immensely intimidating. William fights not to draw back from him. 

It’s true; he’d developed the spell himself when he was twelve years old, and for about three months had taken great delight in wandering about the town, despite Father locking the door to his room, and causing all the shadows of his friends and enemies to spring to life and dance around their feet, cavorting wildly. He still knew one or two who would only come out at noontime or in the darkness of night, when their shadows were feeble. 

But just now he cannot put that history into words. He stares at the god for a moment, speechless, then digs into the pockets of his coat. 

“Your berries,” he says, and thrusts them out. 

The god takes them, reaching out with long fingers to pluck the vial from William’s hand. He holds it up, as if to the light, to examine it, and then tucks it away in an instant, the jar vanishing between one blink and the next. 

“Couldn’t you have just fetched that yourself?” William asks, momentarily disarmed. 

The god looks at William for a long moment. “Of course I could,” he says. “But you presented too… intriguing an opportunity.”

William draws back. “Me? What are you talking about? Why would a god be so interested in me, anyway?”

The god’s eyes fly wide. “A god? Is that what you think I am?” He throws back his head and laughs. “What they say about small towns is true, then!”

William is _sure_ he should be offended. He draws himself up and narrows his eyes. “If you are not a god,” he says, “then who are you?”

“A King,” the man says, his laughter fading to a quiet amusement. “The only King in these lands, really, so perhaps you should call me _the_ King.” He spreads his hands wide, and it is then that William recalls the black feathers upon his coat, which had glinted in the light the first time he’d seen the man. Raven’s feathers. 

William’s knees hit the ground hard. “My King,” he says, throat dry. “What do you ask of me?”

To defy a god is one thing – they are old, and though powerful, likely to forget or overlook a slight. But a King of men, who was raised among the Fae and controls three kingdoms in different worlds – that is another matter entirely. 

“Nothing,” Uskglass says. “I want nothing at all from you, William of this small town called Lanchester.”

William looks up so fast that his neck creaks. “Then why—”

“I was passing through.” The King looks up toward the lintel above them, and steps back, out of its shadows. The dark of the night seems to swallow him. “I like to walk through each of my holdings, even the smallest hamlet. When you… seemed to recognize me, I was intrigued. You have been most amusing.”

Ice snaps through William, strengthening his muscles. He steps stiffly forward. 

“This was all a game to you? A trick?” He cannot contain the outrage in his tone. If there is one thing that has always maddened William, it is being toyed with. 

The King ducks his head, dark hair hiding his eyes. “Of course this was a game,” he says quietly. “They’re the only things I know how to win.”

William’s brow furrows. He stares at the King in silence for a long moment. _You’re mad._ But he cannot say that. “You’ve had your fun,” he says quietly, resentment simmering within.

Nodding, the King reaches out and grasps William by the arm, drawing him forward. 

Alarmed, William tries to invoke a spell to push the man back and allow himself to get away. With a soft gust of wind, though, he is pressed closer to the other man. 

“I would,” the King says, “but I am not quite finished yet.”

William pushes his hands against the man’s chest and tries to shove him back. Whatever this man is planning, he does _not_ want to be involved. He wants to stay here in Lanchester, in his small house with his nagging father, books piled in the corners of his rooms and lost in the blankets on his bed. He never wants to leave those he’s grown up with, the other children he used to play with and trick. He can’t let this King have his way, whatever that may be.

The man moves easily, allowing some distance between them. William stumbles away onto the dirt path that runs beside his house. 

“William of Lanchester,” the man says, the blackness of his hair gleaming in the scant light like feathers, “I call you to my service. I will come for you again, and next time you will accompany me home.” He nods briefly, a glint in his eyes. “I suggest that you settle your affairs.”

Then he is gone as if he has never been, the only sign of his presence a shadow in the doorframe that is darker than usual. 

William blinks and staggers back; he hadn’t seen a spell or felt the magic. Such a working was theoretically impossible. _What is this man?_

His knees have locked. He stands for a long moment, heart pounding, before they finally give and he falls, trembling to the dirt. He reaches out to press his hands against the earth and tries to let the rhythm of nature beneath his grasp guide him, calm him. 

It barely works. 

_That is not a god or human. That creature is a monster._

And he’ll be returning for William soon. 

 

-

 

There are five ways that William can think of to get out this: the first is his own death, which he will not consider unless there is no other option and the King turns out to be a monster in truth rather than simply perception. The second is murder, but William cannot think of a way in which he could possibly kill that man. Of course, he could run – simply pack his bags and slip away in the dead of night, leaving his name and everything he owns behind in order to flee the far-seeing gaze of the King. He could dive into his books and search a spell to protect himself, but the probability of actually finding his salvation in the pages of the tomes he’s already read hundreds of times already is nearly nonexistent. The last, and most dangerous route, is to give in and lull the King into thinking that he has accepted his fate, escaping once the King has let down his guard. 

It might be mad, but the last option seems like the only one with any real chance of success. He will have to let the King of the North take him. 

William pauses in his packing, his fingers numb with the sick anticipation that rolls through him. It has been two days since he gave the King his mistletoe – though of course, the entire thing was a farce. He huffs a laugh he doesn’t feel and shoves the last of his folded braies away. 

He tugs the drawstring of his leather pack closed and swings it up over his shoulder; he had the bag made purposefully by the local tanner for this purpose, as he’s never had reason to travel before, and neither has his father or his father’s father. There is not a single travelling pack in the family. 

Walking through the few rooms of their house, William heads for the kitchen, where his father spends most of his time these days. He steps into the warm, sunlit room and walks over to the low table that his mother had used for years to prepare their meals, and now their father sits before, alone. 

“Father.” He settles his bag on the table with a thump. He father continues to stare at the dead fireplace without blinking. William leans forward. “Father!” he calls. 

Joseph of Lanchester starts, eyes flying wide as he straightens upon his stool.

“William!” he says, breathless, his gaze finally focusing on his son. “What is it?” He looks around the room as if expecting trouble. 

William forces a smile. “Nothing, Father, I just wanted to speak with you.”

His father’s face softens. “That’s kind of you. I’m sorry that I cannot seek you out more often.”

Since his mother’s death nearly a year ago, William’s father has been distant and distracted. At first William had simply been relieved that his father was no longer watching his every move, sharp eyes cataloging whether William was going to church or holding himself properly or acting politely toward the neighbors. His constant, sharp words had driven William near to madness for years. 

But this distance is far more disturbing. It is almost as if, without Anne of Lanchester by his side, William’s father has become a ghost of his former self, no longer able to properly lace his doublet in the morning, let alone oversee William’s behavior. The change has left William bereft, now that he must mind his own actions.

“It’s alright, Father,” William says quietly. “I just wanted to make sure you know what to do if you grow hungry.”

A spark of the old Joseph alights in his father’s eyes. “Don’t take me for a fool,” he says. “I know better than you how to care for myself.”

William nods. “Of course. It’s just that…”

“It’s been quiet around here lately, since your mother has gone.” He pats William’s hand gently and a sharp pain passes through William. “Don’t worry. I can always care for myself now.”

But he can’t. William bites back on the words and lets his weight rest on the table for a moment. Of course, the neighbors will stop by to check on his father if they do not see him for a day or so. They have always been kind, and since their youngest married out of the family, rather lonely. He shouldn’t worry so. 

He can’t help it. In a moment of weakness, William leans forward and pulls his father towards him; he presses a soft kiss to his father’s dry cheek and pulls back.

His father blinks up at him. “William,” he says. “What is it?”

William turns away from that kind smile and shoulders his bag, striding out of the house as quickly as possible.

The sun is low in the sky, beginning to pale and turn orange as it nears the horizon. William glances at it briefly before heading out of the fields surrounding the town. 

His plan is simple: walk. And keep walking, until either the King finds him, or he reaches the shore and escapes from this accursed land. 

The first steps are hard, but soon he has a rhythm going, and the town falls behind. In the quiet of nature, with nothing to distract him, William finds that the thought of leaving England is growing less and less appealing. 

He knows these fields; he has walked them a thousand times as a child and adult. He fell out of that low oak once and hurt his leg so badly that his mother had feared he’d never walk again, and his father had screamed himself hoarse at William. Lately, he often looks out the small window in his room toward these pastures, gazing over the verdant green of summer growth and dull white that comes with the winter snows, when his head has had too much of reading and his thoughts spin. He loves this land. 

William’s steps slow, then stop completely; his pack weighs him down, dragging against his shoulder and towards the ground. 

The sound comes slowly into the silence, seeming at first to be a shift in the breeze, then becoming a soft thudding that grows in volume until it pierces William’s heart and he looks up, heart pounding, at the sound of a thousand wings. 

The ravens swoop down from the sky in a black mass. William stumbles back, away from them, and only keeps his footing by sheer luck. Just as they seem to hit the ground, diving straight into the high grass, they disperse to the sides in a sharp veer. William throws his arms up to shield himself, and when he peeks through, he sees only the King.

His heart twists. “My King,” he says dully, dropping to one knee.

The man strides forward, wearing a simple, dark tunic and pair of braies. He carries his power in his eyes and the strong set of his shoulders. 

“Stand,” he says, and reaches out towards William. “I will not have those who serve me upon their knees. That position serves none well, and all poorly.”

William blinks up at him, then reaches out and allows the King to draw him up. His grasp is cool and smooth, and he quickly releases William. He turns and begins to walk across the field. After a moment’s pause, William follows, striding to come alongside.

“You will have to take a vow, of course,” the King says. “My advisors don’t trust anyone who hasn’t sworn me a vow. Though, I’m not sure that they’ve done so themselves, to be honest.” He glances up at the sky, tone casual and easy.

“What will I be pledging myself to?” William asks. Lanchester seems farther and farther away by the moment. 

“Myself,” The King responds, “and the Kingdom, of course.” He pauses, then turns abruptly on his heel to face William. “Do you love this land?”

William staggers back, sent off balance by the sudden movement, then by the thought that, just a few moments ago, he’d been thinking the exact same thing. “I—Of course!”

“Do you?” the King asks. “Many say the same, but when they reach are tested, they falter in favor of loving themselves.”

William blinks in response. He opens his mouth to answer, but finds no words forthcoming. “I can’t say what will happen,” he says eventually. “I just don’t want to leave my home.”

Perhaps, just perhaps, the King will let him go. 

The King smiles, his face suddenly kind and open. He reaches out to William once more. “This land is your home. Every inch of it.”

The fields surrounding Lanchester spring to William’s mind. They are the only land he knows, the only place he has come to love. Could he truly learn to love an entire kingdom? He cannot imagine it.

But something quickens in his heart as he looks at the King’s palm, open and flat, creased with thin lines that so closely resemble delicately sketched maps that he has only seen in books, never in reality. He reaches out to take it. 

“Yes,” he says, forcing his gaze up to the King’s. “I will swear.” The words leave his throat dry.

The King’s smile reaches his eyes, creasing the corners and setting his expression alight. 

“William of Lanchester, I accept your vow.”

The pressure of magic – always present around this man, thick and heady in texture and palpable even to William, a minor magician – increases, and the ravens come down around them. 

 

\- 

 

 

III.

 

“Here she comes,” Thomas groans, leaning forward in his seat; the chair has a tall back that seems to curl around him whenever he sits back, so he inevitably ends up balanced halfway in the middle, stiff and vaguely irritated. It does not make comfortable seating, but nothing does in the brugh called Myrkviðr. 

“Are you listening, John?” he asks, pressing close to the man near him. 

John appears perfectly comfortable in the chair he has chosen, though Thomas is sure that it is just as predatory as his own. He leans back in it casually, one leg crossed over the other, and his dark eyes flick up to catch the Fairy approaching from across the dance floor. Her skirts are wide and formed from the bark of what appears to be a birch tree, flaking and patchy. Her skin shines with a kind of inner luminescence that marks the younger Fae, who cannot always control the magic within them, and though she is undoubtedly alien, she is beautiful as well. Thomas scowls briefly in her direction. 

“John!” he snaps, nudging his friend with his elbow. “Did you hear me?” 

John Uskglass rolls his head to look at him, his too-long hair trailing over his eyes. “I heard you, Thomas,” he growls. “I simply chose not to respond.”

Thomas sighs. “And why not? You don’t want to dance with that one any more than I do. Let’s go now, before she gets here.”

“And go where?” John inquires, brow lifting. “The Lord will not relax the constraints upon me tonight. I cannot simply leave.”

“If it’s you, you could. Well,” Thomas quips lightly, “if he loses you, he’s still got me.”

John’s eyes flash and he leans in close, pressing near Thomas. “I earnestly wish that you never discover what it is like to be the only human in Myrkviðr,” he hisses.

With that, he stands suddenly, the movement surprising Thomas so greatly that his breath whooshes out of him. He passes the thin-walled glass that holds his drink off to Thomas and then strides away, slipping through the Fae with a skill born of many years practice. 

Thomas forgets, sometimes, that John has been here since he was a baby. He doesn’t know anything of the human world. All he knows is the Fae, and he can never be completely part of that world. Despite that, John is probably the closest that a human can come to being a Fairy. He has mastered the Fairy arts, intimately knows the culture of the brugh, and can list the dynasties of Fairy Lords going back several thousand years. 

The Fairy who has been working her way across the floor stops a scant foot from Thomas, her skirts swaying around her. He looks up through his own unshorn hair and eyes her, a drink clasped in each fist. 

“Where is the boy?” she asks imperiously, and her voice is too strident to carry the illusion. 

Many of the Fairies call John by that name - _boy_. Were he here to hear her, he would likely answer courteously to the epithet. It seems wrong to Thomas that he should be so… undervalued. 

“I’ve no idea who you’re talking about,” Thomas says slowly, leaning back into his chair.

The Fairy’s eyes narrow as she looks down at him, her features shifting ever so slightly towards the inhuman. “You are _lying_.” Her words are drawn out and slow, threatening in the most vicious of ways. 

Thomas shrugs. “I’m sorry, my Lady,” he says. “But I honestly don’t know who this… ‘boy’ is.”

The Fairy bares her teeth in a savage grin, the sharp points of her incisors glinting in the low light. “You do know,” she says, dropping down into a crouch before him. Her skirt crinkles and shifts, the hem bleeding into the shadows and spreading towards Thomas. “You are always with the boy. He is the creature that has no name, the _human_ that haunts these halls and can never be free of the labyrinth. You _know_ who he is.”

The shadows of the Fairy’s skirt have wrapped around Thomas’ legs and now begin to move up them, spreading with their advance a creeping chill that leeches the feeling from first his toes, then his heels and ankles. Thomas’s fingers tighten around the glasses he holds so much that he imagines that he can hear the glass creak, and he straightens in an attempt to work himself away from this Fairy as quickly as possible.

He should cast a spell - likely, these shadowy tentacles that are working themselves up him are illusion only and have no true power. But he cannot think of a way to shred them. Thomas grimaces and tries to pull away. One of the shadows reaches up and grabs his wrist, pulling his hand down. 

A spark of light flashes in his vision and the Fairy flinches, drawing back. Thomas blinks and finds that she’s standing again, her skirt gathered neatly around her and once again resembling the birchbark. Her chin is lifted and her face appears mostly human. 

John walks up behind her, shifting a small object back and forth between his hands. “My Lady,” he says smoothly, nodding his head in greeting to the Fairy. “What brings you to this humble corner of the room?”

His mouth is soft and smiling, mobile with false emotion; only his eyes remain flat and cold as he watches the Fairy. 

“You will dance with me,” the Fairy commands, lifting a hand toward John regally. 

By now Thomas has regained his balance, and so nearly springs up to place himself between John and the creature. 

“Of course,” John says smoothly, taking the Fairy’s long fingers in his grasp and bowing low over them. His free hand reaches back, tucking the small object he has been holding into a small pocket that Thomas has never before noticed, and he sees as it catches the light that it is a small hand mirror. 

_Well_.

With a single sharp glance at Thomas, John walks away, the Fairy by his side. Thomas hears her chattering to John the whole way - snide remarks about humans that cause Thomas to grit his teeth, though it’s been a long time since he’s thought of humans as preferable to the Fae. 

Thomas lifts his glass and knocks back the drink, feeling the liquor that tastes of sunlight and flowers course its way through him. It reminds him of his life in the human world, and tears spring to his eyes. He wipes at them fiercely and blinks, tossing his glass away under the feet of the dancers. He hopes distantly that they slice themselves to the bone on the shards. 

After what seems forever, John returns to him. Thomas lifts his glass and John takes it, drinking the liquor smoothly. Dry-eyed, he turns to cast his sharp gaze over the gathered Fae. 

“Alright?” he asks. 

“Hmm,” Thomas sighs, pushing up to his feet. He briefly stands on the tips of his toes and tests his knees - perfectly steady, despite that Fairy trying to swallow him in shadows. “What was that one?”

John’s glass folds itself away into nothingness, vanishing from his palm. “From Blue Castles,” he explains. “Oberon must have invited her entire family. Closely related to the will-o-the-wisps, but nowhere near so endearing. They have a habit of eating humans, I believe.”

Thomas raises his brows at him. “So how are you unscathed?”

“I may be human,” John says, “but hardly so. I am… tainted.”

Thomas can’t figure out how to respond to that, so he lets their conversation lapse and the weirdly strains of Fae music wrap around them. 

 

-

 

The summons come later, in a moment when John has stepped away to fetch another drink; Thomas meets the gaze of a Fairy standing still on the edge of the dance floor and nods in response to her smile. 

He knows this one – she has never given him her name before, nor has he heard one, but privately he calls her the black lady, for her skin, her eyes, and the clothes she wears are as black as a moonless night. She never speaks, but nor has she tried to swallow him whole. 

Thomas breaks away from the chairs he and John had claimed and moves around the edge of the dance floor to meet her. The ceiling vaults high above them, coming to a peak over the center of the wide floor, and shines with the light of a thousand candles, which have somehow been suspended above. The dancers glow as they move across the floor. 

He yanks his gaze away from them, knowing full well how entrancing the sight of an entire Fairy horde can be. He was once lost for a week, looking at them. Or so John says – Thomas barely remembers the time after he’d first come here, beyond the impression of warmth and light, and nothing else. 

The black lady smiles at Thomas as he approaches, hair bound up on top of her head and languid, long-fingered hand raised. 

“My lady,” he says, raising his palm to hover just below hers and bowing over it. He draws back quickly, without touching her, and she turns away, stepping through the dancers with ease. They seem to part around her.

Thomas sighs and follows, shifting carefully to avoid brushing against the moving Fae – many who have come to the Lord’s brugh are so powerful that even the slightest of contact would call a curse down on Thomas. And he intends to make it out of this place alive and whole. 

One day.

The black lady leads him through the dancers to a quiet corner of the room far from where he and John had hid. There are several figures gathered in the small space, quietly talking. Their voices cease as Thomas approaches, and they turn to eye him suspiciously. The Fae are tall, taller than Thomas by far, and uniformly slim. The black lady joins them, stepping close to one such creature whose cold blue eyes and silver hair make him stand out. After a momentary pause, they move back, parting to reveal the Lord of Myrkviðr. 

He is leaning against the wall, sitting upon a small, rough stool unlike anything else Thomas has seen in the brugh. The Lord is a small Fairy with a cheerful face, and he watches the dancing intently. 

Thomas sinks to his knees before Oberon and lowers his gaze. 

“My Lord, you wished to see me?”

“Indeed. Thank you for coming, Thomas.”

He had not even known that the Lord knew his name. Thomas glances up to see the Lord smiling down at him, handsome for his short height. Something stirs within him and he tears his gaze away. 

The Lord shifts off his stool and moves forward, steps soft on the stone floor. “How are you enjoying the dance?” he asks. 

Thomas stares down at his shoes. “It is splendid,” he says. “More than I could have ever dreamed.”

“Many have said the same,” says the Lord of Myrkviðr, assured pleasure in his voice. “Yet not many have chosen to come here, as you did. I ask again, what do you think of this dance?” His tone hardens on the question. 

The night that Thomas had first met Oberon had been moonless, and Thomas had been nine years old. He’d snuck out of his house an hour past to meet with the older boys who he saw in the market on weekends – they’d challenged him, said he was afraid to go out at night without his parents, that because he was from the _town_ he was weak and cowardly. He was out with a purpose, yet as soon as Thomas saw the Fairy Lord walking through the small forest on the outskirts of town, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to meet the farmers’ boy; after all, there was a much greater adventure right here in front of him.

He’d run into the trees after the Fairy. “Wait!” he’d called. 

The Fairy had appeared before him, slender and small, with golden hair upon his head and a light in his eyes that seemed to come from within. “Little boy,” he’d said. “Why are you calling out, on such a dark night? You will attract attention from things that should not be disturbed.”

“Hmph,” Thomas had responded. “The only thing I see here is you. And you’re not dangerous. You’re a _Fairy_.”

The Fairy had tilted his head wonderingly. “What tales have you been told?” he’d asked.

Thomas had shrugged. “Normal ones. Same as any other. The house matron tells them at night – about your castles, the kingdoms you rule over, the magic you can do. I’ve always wanted to meet you.” His tone had been matter of fact and calm. He’d always thought that the life of a Fairy sounded so much better than the life that Thomas was used to, where all he could do at night was listen to the sounds of laughter and music coming from downstairs and wait for his mother to come up, smelling of sour wine, and press a kiss to his cheek. 

This meeting was altogether different from real life. It was as if he’d stumbled into a tale. 

He’d leaned down to be eye to eye with the Fairy. “Will you show me your castle?” he’d asked. 

The Fairy had blinked with what Thomas thought was surprise. “The Fae do not answer to the demands of humans,” he had said darkly.

“Oh! I’m not demanding,” Thomas had said. “I just want to see.”

A pleading tone had crept into his voice, sneaky and traitorous; after a long moment, the Fairy had lifted his hand and said, “I am Oberon, the Lord of Myrkviðr. Do you wish to see my kingdom?”

Thomas had taken it without a second thought. 

Now, of course, everything has changed. He has no idea of how long he has lived here in the brugh, except that he is taller than when he’d come here, and his voice is deeper. It must have been _years_. And yet never once has the dancing stopped. 

“The dance is beautiful,” Thomas says. He feels the Fairy’s gaze fix upon him, sharp and prodding, but Oberon does not push him further.

He moves close and lays a delicate hand on Thomas’ shoulder. Thomas rocks, stunned by the sheer power that flows through the Lord, and sways upon his knees. 

“What do you think of the boy?” the Lord asks Thomas quietly, his voice almost inaudible over the music. 

Thomas grits his teeth. He will not share John’s name with the Lord, if the Lord refuses to use it. That would only give him more power. 

“He is truly one of the Fae,” Thomas says, unwilling to reveal more about John. It is not every day that the Lord of Myrkviðr takes an interest in John’s activities, and if he has something planned for John, Thomas means to stop him. 

“He is human,” the Lord protests, offence in his tone. 

“Hardly,” Thomas counters, gaze flicking up to the Lord and then down again. “He is Fae, in everything but blood. Can you not see that?” He casts his gaze across the dance floor, but cannot catch sight of John. 

The Lord does not appear to have the same limits, though, if the focus of his gaze is anything to go by. 

Thomas decides to dare a few more words. “You could not have asked for a better son.”

Oberon’s gaze snaps to him and he whirls, stiff with rage. Thomas lowers his head quickly, feeling the Lord’s magic rise. He should not have spoken. 

“You speak the truth,” the Lord says, his tone easy enough that Thomas dares to look up. The Lord has assumed a relaxed posture once more. “Not many do.”

Thomas remains silent this time, his gaze locked with the Lord’s pale, inhuman eyes. 

“Return to the boy’s side,” he says. “I want to see what you make of each other.”

 

-

 

“I wish,” Thomas says as he steps next to John once more, “that I could return home. Then I would not have to worry about the Lord calling me at any moment, and perhaps deciding to kill me today.”

He glances over, sure that John’s gaze is upon him, but is wrong. John is watching the dancing calmly, as if Thomas had never been called away. He changes tactics.

“Where did you get that mirror?” he asks quietly.

John glances half over his shoulder. “Won it,” he says. “In a game of cards.”

Thomas snorts. “Be serious. The Lord is watching us now. You can’t let him catch you with that.” Not once has Thomas seen a mirror in the halls of Myrkviðr. He has always had the feeling that the Faeries could lay their greedy hands upon one if they wanted, but chose instead to stay away from the silvered glass. 

“Does it matter?” John asks. “I have one. It is as simple as that.”

“Nothing with you is ever that simple,” Thomas says. “One day you announce that you will return to the lands of men and seek revenge for your fallen kin, and the next day you proclaim that there has never been a place so comfortable for you as Myrkviðr. I swear, John, I never know what you’re thinking.”

“That,” John says, “is precisely the point.”

John’s words leave him feeling quite discomfited, and Thomas turns back to the dancers. 

 

-

 

Thomas blinks and finds that he has become transfixed by the dancers once more, and that John has gone while he was distracted. Cursing, he stands quickly and looks around, searching for John. 

He can’t find the man anywhere – it’s as if he’s disappeared completely. Carefully, Thomas casts his gaze over to the corner where he’d met Oberon, but sees nothing moving in the area. Perhaps he isn’t being watched. 

Over the years, he and John have found certain places around the edge of the dance floor where the light does not reach and shadows hold court, where the gazes of the curious Fae do not reach. These places are good to slip away to when one becomes exhausted of all else in the brugh. That must be where John has hidden himself away this time. 

Thomas walks across the hall, foregoing his usual glass of liquor and glancing about as casually as he can, working his way towards the place he remembers. 

Behind a curtain that half covers a piece of broken wall is a nook hidden from plain sight. Thomas moves near it and then, after a pause to make sure he is unobserved, slips inside. He’s never found great cause to worry about the Fae observing his movements – most couldn’t care less about a human in their midst, and those who do watch have little opinion over his actions. 

It is John who garners more attention. 

Thomas moves behind the curtain fully and finds John crouched low to the unpolished stone floor, half-shielding something with his body.

He is fiddling, it seems, with the small mirror he’d hidden in his pocket earlier. 

John has laid the piece of glass flat on the dirt floor and leans over it, his voice low in a coarse whisper and his fingers nimbly shaping spells over his reflection. 

Careful to be quiet, Thomas creeps over. As he moves, the mirror seems to shift, growing broader on the floor until it fills the entire space beneath John; Thomas slowly realizes that John is kneeling at the edge of a pool of light encased in glass, nothing at all but emptiness looking back at him. 

This is not the mirror that John had secreted into his pocket, but something else entirely. 

Thomas must have made a sound of some kind, because John stops whispering his spells. The lack of sound is dramatic in the small space; the eternal music of Myrkviðr is muted here to near-silence. 

John looks up and meets Thomas’ gaze. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. As Thomas watches, his knees begin to sink down into flat plane of the mirror. 

John breaks away from Thomas’ gaze in time to look down and see himself being eaten by the mirror. 

“What have you done?” Thomas fairly shouts, throwing caution aside. 

John’s gaze flicks up to his, then falls back to the mirror once more. “Don’t say anything,” John says, a kind of wild restraint evident in his tone, and he slips farther into the mirror. He is almost halfway gone, now, vanished up to his chest. 

Thomas finally frees himself and lunges forward. He reaches for John’s shoulders. “What have you _done_?” he hisses, unable to conjure new words upon his tongue. 

“Don’t!” John snaps as his shoulders slip beneath the shimmering glass of the mirror. Thomas flinches back. “Wait.”

That is the last word Thomas hears before John’s mouth is taken under and he closes his eyes, then vanishes. 

 

-

 

He wakes to a hand on his shoulder and cold stone under his side. 

Groaning, Thomas pushes himself up to sitting. The mirror is still on the floor, but it is not so empty as before. It reflects the black roots that form the ceiling of the dance hall, shadowed wood covered in cobwebs spun by something that he does not believe to be spiders. Thomas stares into it for a long moment before catching movement from the corner of his eye and jolting.

He shifts to place his body between the mirror and whoever has come, then realizes that it’s John. 

“Where have you been?” he hisses, lunging up.

John moves half a step back and then stops. He keeps his secrets.

“Don’t give me that,” Thomas says lowly. “You _vanished_. And not only that, but you’ve brought a mirror in the brugh. Are you trying to get us--”

John places a hand on Thomas’ mouth and shoves him back across the space. He hits the wall hard, his breath driven from him. 

“No,” John says. “But apparently you are.”

Thomas scowls at John as best he can over the top of John’s hand. After a long moment, he feels himself begin to settle, and John lets him go. He lets John move away from him before following. 

“What did you do? What kind of spell was that?”

John ignores him, walking to the mirror spread on the floor. Her bends over and reaches down; his body blocks the glass for an instant, and when Thomas blinks, it’s gone. 

John tucks the small hand-mirror into his pocket. Thomas moves forward and reaches for him. 

“What have you _done_?” he asks again. 

John’s gaze flicks over to him, sharp and flashing. “Keep your voice down,” he says, and straightens. “You asked for it, after all. ”

“For you to get us killed?” He follows John to curtain. John peers around it carefully; it wouldn’t do to step out if they are watched. “You never think--” 

He cuts his words off as John steps out into the light. Thomas moves forward quickly, peering around the curtain and then darting out to follow John. 

Nothing has changed – the dancing continues, and distantly, beyond the sound of music, Thomas hears the sound of weeping. He pauses and turns, searching for the source of the sound, but can’t locate it; it seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, and it sends chills up his spine.

When he looks back, John is gone. Thomas steps backwards to the wall and presses himself against it, surprised to find that he’s trembling. 

It could be anger – John’s mysteries and inhuman qualities often cause Thomas much frustration. More likely, it is something more insidious and terrible, which creeps through his muscles and into his thoughts, making him weak and foolish. He’ll never get out of the brugh if he allows himself to worry so. 

_Out_. 

It’s peculiar that such a small word can cause him such pain. He hardly regrets leaving the human world anyway. The one thing he does miss is the light - it was always present there, streaming down in bright, searing rays from the sun, cool and calm when the moon hung high above, or weak and warm when it can from the wick of a candle. Humans crave light - they worship it. In Myrkviðr, true light cannot be found anywhere. The light that pours down upon Oberon’s dancers is cold and pale; it hardly illuminates, but reveals just enough to allow the next step and turn. 

He glances up to the candles hanging high above. Is fire in the human world warmer? Is it brighter?

After so many years, he can hardly recall. 

Thomas pushes himself away from the wall and moves towards the dancers. He will slip among them and take a turn. Right now, he wants to forget.

 

-

 

An eternity later – a blink of the eye in Myrkviðr, or perhaps a human year – John vanishes.

Of course, Thomas hasn’t been looking for John. Instead he has been distracting himself with Fae liquor and Fae dancing, hardly paying mind to the man he’d once considered a brother of a sort. He has caught sight of John from the corners of his eyes in odd moments, only because it is difficult to miss a human standing still amongst the dancers, clad in black garments and black hair, yet nonetheless seeming defiant. He’d turned his gaze away.

And now John is nowhere to be found. 

He heads to Oberon first.

“What have you done?” he demands from his knees. The Lord regards him incredulously, glass half lifted to his lips. 

He watches Thomas for a long moment and then turns to the black lady, half hidden by the shadows behind him. “Lost,” he pronounces. 

“ _No_ ,” Thomas bites out. He knows what that word means to the Fae, and he is not mad. Not yet. “Where have you taken John?”

Oberon’s brow furrows in an uncharacteristic display of emotion. “Where? Nowhere. The human boy still dances among us.”

Lies. Thomas snarls and surges to his feet, turning to move away from the Lord and into the dancers. John is nowhere to be found. He is not within Myrkviðr, that Thomas can see. 

He stops, heart thudding unsteadily in his chest. He has never walked the brugh without John before. He has always had that other human by his side. He shoves his trembling hands against his sides and attempts to tuck them out of sight. 

He needs to get away, somewhere private – the Fae are drawn to weakness as if it were fresh blood.

Thomas heads for the small, hidden corner of the hall and finds the mirror stretched wide upon the floor, reflecting nothing but impenetrable darkness. He stares into it for several long moments before moving, falling to his knees by its side. He stares down into the darkness, searching for his reflection, but sees nothing. There is an absolute void beyond the mirror, and it sends chills down Thomas’ spine. 

It is as if his eyes are adjusting, because in the distance he begins to see shapes and distant lines, reaching from the plane of the mirror into the distance. There, the shadows are lighter, the void penetrable. 

It is as if there is a pathway etched into the darkness, reaching from where the mirror begins, into the nothing. Thomas’ brow furrows. For the first time he begins to think of the mirror as something else entirely. 

It may look like a mirror. May seem like one when John tucks it away into his pocket, but it is nothing like this. It is a doorway. 

_Out._

Thomas’ hand trembles as he reaches out over the doorway’s surface. There is no resistance to his touch; the mirror itself does not shimmer or shift, and his fingers meet nothing. 

Muscles tightening, he draws back. 

Something within the mirror shifts, a soft wind flowing out of the mirror to brush across the pads of his fingers, curling around under his palm and tickling the veins in his wrist, sending him off balance. There is _a breeze_ coming from inside the mirror. 

Madness. 

Suddenly off balance, Thomas slides forward, his knees slipping into the mirror as he’d watched John do just a few days before. He reaches out to catch himself in a spasm of fright and his hands meet nothing. He slips through the mirror completely and falls, between one breath and the next, onto the road beyond.

 

-

 

 

IV.

 

The man is young, with hair the color of oakbark and smooth, pale skin. He lies on the ground with his hands tucked tightly to his sides and his head turned to the left, chin pressed tight against his shoulder. His eyes are partly open, lashes lifted to reveal misted, glassy orbs.

His flesh has sunken in death, the bloat that affects the bodies of those who have passed on having left him hours before.

Catherine stands at his feet, peering down. His tunic and hose are plain, and he wears not a single ring upon his fingers. If it were not for the fineness of his clothes, she would never suspect that he was the once the heir to an earldom.

A particularly loud shout causes her to glance up. Thomas and the King are arguing, as usual. It appears that William dropped out of the argument some time ago; he stands a few metres away from the pair under the spreading limbs of an ash tree.

“This is _barbaric_!” Thomas shouts, obviously having run out of finer arguments.

The King grins at him, a dark humour creasing the corners of his eyes. He shifts, his dark hair falling over his eyes. “So you’ve said, Thomas,” he responds. “And that argument never ceases to amuse me.”

Thomas looks angry enough to spit. He always takes the King’s arguments too personally, but Catherine supposes that that does happen when one grows up with a man like John Uskglass as his foster brother.

Lifting her skirts, Catherine steps around the dead man’s feet and walks toward the three. “Remind me again,” she says in a low voice as she walks near them, “why you believe that you will be able to convince the spirit of Henry Barbatus - the bravest, the most chivalrous of all the knights who ever swore to follow you - to give up his father’s secrets to you?” As she’d hoped, her quiet tone draws the men’s attention.

The King’s eyes flash and he quickly lids them. “I am his liege,” he says.

“Indeed,” William agrees, his face shadowed where he stands beneath the ash. “As is the Robert Barbatus, to his son. Henry will not betray his father simply because you ask it of him. He did not do so in life, after all. Your desire for revenge will not motivate him further.”

William of Lanchester is a steady man, in both build and personality. His hair is cropped short to his head and his doublet is cut from a dark, unassuming fabric. He laughs often, and lines have become engraved in his face over the years. His eyes flash with a sharp intelligence and he is constantly wary of trickery; his uncanny ability to sniff out deceit has made him into the watchdog of the King’s Court, and Catherine has often heard this lord or that lord whisper about his ability to bring down his enemies, laughing all the while.

Catherine has met William thrice, and spoken to him once, over the matter of the source of magic - he had opined that it came from within the soul, and Catherine had countered that such was impossible, as Fairies have magic, but no souls. She wished now that they could return to such friendly debates. 

The King flaps a hand. “The fever took Henry too soon. I had not the opportunity to question him as I would have liked.” He walks forwards and leans over the body, inspecting it closely. “He would have spilled his secrets to me.”

The darkness in his tone chills Catherine, and she is reminded of the first days when she met the King - when he hid his true form from her and seduced her into saying _yes_. She reaches down and wraps the tail of her belt around her fist, willing the beams of moonlight that she has twisted into the fibres to comfort her. Alas, they fail in their duty.

“I do not recognize you anymore,” Thomas bites out.

Catherine glances at his thin lips and wide eyes and wonders. This is a man who grew up, for the most part, in a Fairy brugh. He knows the ways of the Fae (and John Uskglass) intimately, yet even he cannot stop the King from this folly.

The King turns upon Thomas, drawing himself up. With his thin coat wrapped tightly around him and his eyes narrowed, he appears very tall - more so than usual, as if he towers over them.

“Then you never knew me at all,” he says, and Catherine wonders if she imagines the pain in his words.

Silence spreads over the clearing, thick and hard to break. It clings to Catherine as she tries to string words together. She cannot; only questions move through her thoughts.

_What purpose do I have here? For what reason did you seek me out?_

But she has asked these things before and received no answer.

She looks down to the dirt at her feet and scratches her soft leather shoes through the dust, flexing her toes.

“Well, then.” The King has turned away from them, folded his power away so that he appears small and human. “This deed will keep. It need not be finished this moment.”

“I agree,” says William, moving out of the shadow of the tree. He glances up at the greying sky, as featureless as the earth in this bleak place. “Shall we, then?” He reaches out a hand to Catherine, gallant persona fixed in place once more. It is not often that he allows himself to act naturally; with William, every movement can feel an act, a farce, and so he likes you to think. His laughter conceals the blades hidden up his sleeves.

The King moves to stand beside her and Catherine reaches out to take his arm. It is a custom she has become used to, the many times they have met, though never comfortable with.

“Will I be staying here?” she asks as they step past William’s scowl and Thomas’ averted gaze, towards the near-invisible path that the King has woven from shadows and memory.

Perhaps he merely asked her here for her opinion and intends to return her to her time now that she has heard their arguments. But she suspects not; this time, surely, she will be allowed to stay.

“I don’t intend to let you go,” he responds. “After all, I went to such trouble to get you here.”

As they step onto the King’s Road, a chill moves up her legs and she shifts fractionally closer to him.

“Why do you go to this much trouble?” They have moved away from the others now and the path has closed around them. She will see William and Thomas later, she is sure - in the halls, perhaps, or at dinner. As always, Thomas will avoid her, treat her as if she is a creature from another world altogether, worse than a Fairy. William is overly friendly, too gregarious to be borne, and Catherine has taken to avoiding him. For now, it is just she and the King.

He does not answer her question; perhaps he thinks she knows. But how can she?

“I met you once, you know,” she says. “When you were young.”

“I remember,” he says. She glances over to see that he’s smiling softly. “I was so angry and determined to conquer all of England – though it soon became apparent that such thoughts were folly. You were strong, and so unconquerable.” He pauses. “I didn’t take you to that time, that I recall. When will I teach you that spell?”

She smiles to herself for an instant. “You won’t,” she says. She has much improved since the King began instructing her in the use of magic. “I hated you then, you know. You didn’t remember me - you didn’t even look at me twice, at first. You were so different then, so… kind.” Despite his hatred of the English, there had been a bright luminescence, a wild hope that had shone in his eyes as a young man. Now he seems almost a madman.

“Thomas would not agree with you in that,” he says, and though his eyes are smiling, he sounds exhausted.

Catherine tightens her grip on his arm. They step forward and, in an instant, the soft sole of her shoe touches the stone of the castle floor. She shifts and steps off the King’s Road, into the human world once more. The King follows smoothly, straightening as if a weight has lifted from his shoulders.

Releasing him, Catherine steps back. “Will I see you later, then?”

He does not respond. When she looks up he is gone, and only the shadows remain behind. Damn that habit of his. She scowls at the place where he’d stood. The man really does need to learn a new trick. This one is still so damned frustrating - for all that he has taught her, this is not something he has shared with her.

Catherine stands still for a moment; the Kings Road will not likely lead Thomas or William to directly this point in the castle, so she need not step out of the path.

The castle is quiet - they have arrived high up, and were she to walk to one of the arrow slits she would see the earth far below. Up here there are few windows and little light beyond the torches fastened onto the wall that burn hollowly, sucking at the air.

Her hands slowly unclench from her skirts, fingers working free from the fabric. Now she can breathe. Relax, or something like it.

 

-

 

He finds William of Lanchester on the battlements, leaning over the sharp, crenellated rocks and peering across the flat land below. He stops, his bones aching with age for the thousandth time today, and backs away. He doesn’t want company.

“Thomas!”

It seems he won’t have any choice, though. He turns back to face Lanchester.

“I hadn’t expected to see you this night!” the man exclaims, pushing off the stone of the castle walls and moving forward. His smile is broad, and though his teeth are crooked and the shadows long, he projects the very essence of cheer.

Thomas forces a smile and steps towards him. He nods to the other man and says, “And I, you, Lanchester. How are you this night?”

“ _Thomas_.” Lanchester moves forwards and swings his arm around Thomas’ shoulders. Thomas stiffens and tries desperately not to react further. “Don’t be so formal. We’ve known each other for _years_.”

In all the time that he has known Lanchester, Thomas has come to see the man as a very quick, intelligent man who hides behind a personality that he considers to be, frankly, abrasive. Most of the time he can ignore that; tonight is entirely different.

He shrugs off Lanchester’s arm and moves to the crenellations, leaning forward. The earth stretches out below, dizzyingly far away.

“Thomas,” Lanchester says again, his tone shifting to something more delicate. “You must not let this destroy you.”

Thomas swings around suddenly, hotly angry.

“How will this destroy me? I am the one human here who will out-live you all. It is not _my_ soul that concerns me.”

Lanchester’s gaze, so enigmatic and shadowed, shifts into seriousness. “That will be your downfall.” He pauses and moves to the battlements, keeping a neat distance between them. “Remind me how long have you been with the King?”

Thomas shrugs. “Three hundred years, now?” He does not feel so old, except for these moments in the night when the weight of those years pulls him down and he wishes for nothing but a long, deep sleep.

And no dreams.

“I could not do it,” Lanchester muses. “Three hundred years would drive me mad, I am sure.”

That surprises a laugh out of Thomas. He ducks his head and attempts to smother the sound in the collar of his doublet. “How do you know I’m not?”

“Oh, you’re too canny,” Lanchester says.

Thomas looks up. The darkness makes it hard to read Lanchester’s expression. “I’m hardly that.”

Lanchester turns, eyes flashing as he looks up at the dim outline of the moon hanging high above, half obscured by clouds. “More so than I. You have kept the King’s fits of… madness in check, using only the sentiment he bears you to rein him in. Yet no matter how hard I try, no matter what logic I bring before him, the King rarely listens.”

“You undersell yourself.” Thomas folds his hands in front of him, lacing his fingers together. “It is only now that John refuses to listen to you. He will listen to no one in his desire to pay Robert Barbatus back for his betrayal.” His voice drops, quieting.

“And it is now that he _must_.” Lanchester’s voice is full of mourning and frustration. It is one of the few times that Thomas has seen the man’s bravado stripped from him. “I had thought that if not us, he would at least listen to Catherine.”

Thomas turns his gaze back to the land. That woman. It is an abomination, what John has done to magic with her. He has twisted and broken so many laws of nature by pulling her from her time and into others, teaching her his secrets and then sending her to the past and future and everything in between, that it makes Thomas dizzy. He avoids her if at all possible.

She fixates John. Thomas cannot quite fathom it, but John will not leave her alone. No matter how Thomas begs, John returns to her again and again. He does not think it is love, but perhaps something akin to ownership.

Lanchester’s next words are sharp. “If only we could kill Robert Barbatus instead.”

Thomas has wished the same many times. But it would not rid them of this problem. “You know why we cannot.”

“I do not care! Surely the Earl’s death would destroy most of his schemes, and satisfy the King’s desire for revenge doubly.”

Thomas shakes his head. “But not all. And you know that John does not simply… call his enemies out and slay them. He has other ways of doing things.” _Fae ways._ “We must burn this corruption out at its root.”

Robert Barbatus, the Earl of Wharfdale, is an old man by human standards. His hair has gone grey and white and the lines in his face are much deeper than when he’d first bent the knee to John and sworn him loyalty. Then, he had been the youngest son, and now he holds sway over half of John’s earthly kingdom, and gains more power by the week.

Putting an end to Barbatus’ schemes does not simply mean the man’s death – they will live on without him. Henry may be the key to learning his father’s secrets and putting a stop to his machinations once and forever, if only Henry wasn’t a dead man. 

It was almost too convenient. As if someone wanted to stop John from even getting close to the earl.

But even now, John will not balk. Thomas had not realized until years after they had both returned from Faerie - after he had successfully unraveled the knotted passages behind the mirror that John called his Roads - how different from other humans John had become. 

Though Thomas knows better, ofttimes it seems that John Uskglass is closer to Fairy than man.

“I know he has his reasons,” Lanchester sighs. “But there are other ways! Other spells we can try, or spies we can turn. Despite everything – all that we’ve said, all that _Catherine_ has said - he still thinks that raising poor, dead Henry Barbatus is the logical conclusion.”

“I don’t think,” Thomas says slowly, “that that logic has anything to do with this. John knows as well as we do that this way lies madness and despair. But he refuses to turn from this course.”

“Has he shared his plan with you?” Lanchester’s chin jerks toward him as he asks the question. “He cannot be so transfixed by Barbatus’ betrayal that he has forgotten all else.”

“No.” John has never shared his secrets with Thomas. But he knows his King and friend well enough to know what is going through John’s mind.

If Henry Barbatus tells his secrets easily, well enough - they will have gained a hold over the Earl with a minimum of sacrifice, except on John’s part. And if the dead man proves intractable, at least John will not have to add another life to his tally, seeing that the boy died several days ago. Killing him a second time shouldn’t stain John’s soul too deeply.

Yet it is the very thought of the act that sends a queasy kind of fear rushing through Thomas. The boundary between life and death has always been… if not sacred to him, then at least immutable. Thomas has always known that, no matter how long he lives, he will eventually die. He will find peace, though it may not be of the Christian kind.

If John shatters that wall and hauls Henry Barbatus back screaming to his body, then Thomas shudders to think of what will come next. It can only be doom.

He bites down on the word, unable to even mutter it aloud.

“That tower,” Lanchester sighs, and Thomas is so thrown off by the words that he starts with surprise and turns to face William fully.

“What?”

Lanchester shakes his head. “I just wish he wouldn’t lock himself away in that tower,” he says, nodding toward a spire across the castle. Though there are several in sight to choose from, dimly outlined in the night air, Thomas knows precisely the one he means: the King’s Tower. “I wish he wouldn’t lock himself away in there,” he continues. “I’m afraid that one day he’ll just forget that we exist and he’ll vanish inside with his schemes, never to come out again.”

Every time John turns away from him, Thomas fears the same. But he will not say that aloud.

“Even if he does,” he hears himself say dully, as if from a great distance, “we will not forget about him. We will do what he cannot.” He cannot quite place where the words come from, except that they feel right. He allows the soft breeze of the night lift them up into the air and carry them off to ears unseen.

“As always,” Lanchester says, shoulders hunched as if under a great weight.

Thomas nods and offers a smile, though William does not look up to see. “By Bird and Book,” he whispers.

 

-

 

He smiles, pressing his palm against the cold, smooth glass of the window. He can barely fit his hand onto the pane, it is so slim, but the sensation serves to anchor him nonetheless. 

His birds preen on the rooftop, small shifts of life and movement that tug at his attention. Further away is the land, a slow, warm presence against the soles of his feet and then the rivers, which feel like a cold pounding inside of his chest. He feels his lips curl up into a smile without thought. 

In comparison, the lives within the castle seem small – tiny flickers of love and hatred and everything in between bundled together. It occurs to him that if he does not succeed in this, those fires will be snuffed. 

The hatred within him burns _hotter_.

With the barest of thoughts, he calls his birds.

They rise up into the sky in a great mass and await his message.

 

-

 

It is not until the dark hours of the morning that the castle falls into silence, its inhabitants either locked into their chambers or tucked into bed.

Thomas, once of Dundale (or Erceldoune, depending on when you hail from), sits at his desk with his hands clasped in front of him, scouring his thoughts for another way, another word that may convince his dearest friend and almost-brother to not raise the dead and bring down their doom.

Catherine of Winchester, so far from her true home - not in place but in time - lies in the soft bed that has been given to her and cannot convince her eyes to slip closed. Every time they do, she sees the sharp line of Henry Barbatus’ collarbone sticking out from his doublet, the way his brown hair had curled around the shell of his ear.

In his study, William of Lanchester pulls yet another book down from the shelves, seeking some way - any way - to resolve this without violating every law of magic he has ever heard of. Of course, the King makes a habit of breaking whatever rules he can find and burning the rest to the ground, but William holds out hope that just this once - and perhaps at the last moment - reason will prevail.

Outside, the ravens descend to fly around the castle, their wings beating the air harshly and breaking the stillness of the night. Their cries echo off the stones and sound, and the few who are awake to hear them, like voices.

“Do not leave me now,” quoth the birds.

 

-

 

The sun does not rise over this distant land, devoid of life aside from a few twisted, wizened trees.

Between two such ancients lies the unchanged body of Henry Barbatus. The sight of it still saddens William, though he has had days to get used to the boy’s death. Henry had been a lovely child; he’d come to the castle to serve as a page when he was nine, and never quite left. After page, he’d been squire, and then a young knight, renowned among those in the castle for his prowess with a sword and quick hand with a spell. Oh, he’d been nothing to the four who now gathered around him, but he had been a brave boy. And kind, unlike so many others.

Including his father.

“We have come to it,” the King says. “Will you aid me in this?”

They look to him in silence for a long moment.

“You are not giving us a choice,” William says, as faintly accusatory as he can manage. “You want to force our hands, drag us into this mess along with you.” He pauses. “John, there are other _ways_.” He does not use the King’s name lightly; today, he feels the desperation in his tone is merited.

The King’s gaze sharpens upon him, dark as if he is one of the ravens that the people so often call him.

“Indeed,” he says. “And which of your methods would destroy Robert’s schemes utterly?”

William’s eyes fly wide and he takes a half-aborted step forward. “All of them! With a few simple spells we could be at the Earl’s bedside; I would kill the man myself, if you asked!” He reaches out with his desperation to make the King understand, then snatches his hands back.

“You do not understand,” the King sighs. “I must do much worse.” He turns his heavy gaze upon the dead man.

“Have you considered,” begins Thomas quietly from the King’s side, “what you will do to English magic if you raise the dead?” His tone is unsteady, the words he has dammed up inside him making him falter.

The King does not even look at him. “What I tear down will be rebuilt. In time. I am not the sole master of English magic.” He pauses, then turns to his other side where Catherine stands, seemingly placid in her long gown and barbette. “Will you fight me, too?” he asks.

She gazes at him for a long moment, long enough that William begins to feel awkward and shifts in his place.

“I swore to follow you, and so I shall. Though know this,” she says, eyes flashing. “I will aid you no longer after this day. You have taught me much, my King, but if this act is your will, then consider it the last boon I will give you.”

His head bows, and over it, William meets Catherine’s hard gaze. She breaks the connection and moves forward, crouching by Henry’s side. She looks up to the King.

“What must I do?”

After a pause, William to gives in as well. He kneels by Henry’s side and looks up. “I, too, place my vows upon this moment. You, who have listened to me for years and whom I have called friend, have decided to ignore me - all of us - in this crisis. You listen to only anger instead. I will stand by you now, but no longer.” He knows of no stronger way to rein John in at this last moment. He prays to anything listening that the King still treasures his friends.

A long moment passes in which there is nothing but silence.

“Lift his head,” the King says. “His eyes must face me.” He straightens, hardening his expression, and slips off his jacket. He begins to roll up the sleeves of his shirt.

William hesitates, stomach clenching. It seems that he has… less value than he’d thought. Just as he moves to reach for the dead man’s head, something catches the corner of his eye and Thomas steps forward. 

“When we were children together,” Thomas says, “the Lord of Myrkviðr told me that I spoke the truth when no other would. So I will speak now, for the last time.” He pauses and takes in a deep breath. “If you raise Henry Barbatus from the dead, you will bring down your own doom upon us, and sacrifice everything to retain your crown.”

John Uskglass’ gaze is deeply shadows, and unreadable to William. “I do not wish it,” he says. “But it must be done. I am the King, and I must protect my land.”

Thomas’ shoulders slump, and then he stoops down, settling carefully onto his knees. He wraps his fingers around Henry’s sunken jaw and lifts the head from the shoulder, pointing it upward.

The movement is curiously boneless. 

Above, William feels the King pause briefly in his movement, then resume. “Grasp his arms as well. I need him still.”

Numb, William reaches out and takes Henry’s arm, pressing it down into the earth. On the other side of the body, Catherine does the same.

The King has a knife. He deftly places the blade against his palm and draws it down, the tightening of tendons in his neck the only sign of pain he gives. Then he reaches out and begins to speak. Latin words pierce the air, uncommonly powerful. Drops of dark blood fall from the King’s open hand onto Henry’s half-closed eyes.

William’s stomach roils as he watches the thick liquid drip onto the dulled eyeball beneath Henry’s lashes and spread, thinning out as it passes across the smooth, slightly shrunken surface of the orb, casting a red sheen across the device.

“Open his mouth.”

Thomas moves to do so and William sees that blood has spattered across Henry’s cheeks and nostrils as well. The King stoops low and blood falls into the dead man’s open mouth, onto the rotting remains of his tongue.

The incantation ceases and the King clenches his hand into a fist, remaining low and intent.

Henry’s right eye shuts first, then his left. He blinks, his eyes flicking open - one stained red and the other clouded grey - and his muscles tense under William’s hand. He presses the arm down more firmly, and tries not to think.

“Henry Barbatus,” the King says, “I command you to rise.”

There is a long pause. “My Lord?” the dead man sounds confused, and his voice is rusty. He blinks upward, gaze wandering for a moment before fixing on the King. 

“Rise, Henry,” the King commands, his voice infinitely calm. 

William pulls back, releasing the dead man, and forces his creaking knees to rise. He steps back from Henry and watches as he rolls onto his side, ungainly as he had never been in life, and stands. 

The dead man shifts on his feet in front of his King; his shoulders are stooped. 

The King moves forward and reaches out, pressing his fingers to Henry’s jaw. He lifts the young man’s head until their gazes meet. 

“Do you recall your vows?” he asks Henry.

The dead man nods. His lips shape words near-silently, and John ducks his head close to his lips to hear them. 

The only ones that William can make out are, “By Bird and Book.”

He shudders, sudden nausea sweeping through him. 

The King nods, satisfied. “I wish you to serve me once more,” he says.

Henry looks up at his Lord. “However I may, Your Grace. I will do whatever you ask.”

John pauses. “I must go to war,” he says quietly and mournfully. William’s stomach churns at the thought of the lies that this man must be telling. “Within the week, I will gather an army to march upon your father, the Earl of Wharfdale.”

Henry shows no reaction, and William wonders whether the young man can truly feel right now - if he even recalls his own father or if his only thought is for his new master, the creature who brought him back to life. 

“I wish you to carry my standard,” the King says lowly. “You will walk before my army.”

Henry nods in acquiescence and William feels his eyes fly wide. 

“You must be mad!” he bursts out. “It will take weeks to reach Wharfdale, and that is riding. To ask him to _walk_ there—”

“You will not fail me, will you, Henry?” He directs his attention towards Henry, as if William has just been speaking to himself.

The young man kneels in response. “I will not, My Liege,” he says. “I will walk day and night, unceasing, to bring your will to fruition.”

William goes cold and steps back as John looks up.

“He will carry my standard into the Court at Wharfdale,” the King says, “and none will dare stop him. He will lay my standard before his father’s feet, and I will release him from this spell by cutting out his eyes, his tongue… and his heart.”

William is struck dumb. 

“Stand, Henry,” the King says. “I will call upon you soon.”

The dead man moves to the side. He is already pale and shrunken; William cannot imagine the horrors that weeks of movement and exposure to the elements will wreak upon his body. 

“So,” John says, meeting each of their gazes in turn. “You will leave me now.”

“I will have no part in this,” William hears, and realizes a moment later that those are his own words. “I will not break my vows, but neither will I go to war with you.”

“I will,” Thomas says, causing William to start in surprise. “I shall ride beside you to Wharfdale, but no further.”

John nods in response to both their words, and the movement angers William. How dare he act as if his acquiescence holds any power over them? Whether he agreed or not, William would follow this course. 

His gaze strays to Henry, standing without breathing, and he is nearly sick. He presses a hand to his mouth and closes his eyes. 

Catherine steps forward, toward the King. William hopes, for a second, that she will hit him, but she only holds out her arm. 

“Bring me home,” she says. 

Hesitantly, the King takes her elbow and steps close, into the position that William has seen them in too many times. Catherine tucks her head close to his; her lips open and she whispers something that causes John to pull back, his expression shuttering. 

He turns and begins to walk. Henry follows them, soundless. 

After a moment, William turns to Thomas. “What did she say to him?” he asks numbly. “I know that your hearing is much better then mine.”

Thomas glances at him, pain in his gaze. “She said: ‘I wish I had met you for the first time in my own time, when you were kind. I wish I had never known you now.’”

Even William flinches at that; he cannot imagine another John Uskglass, as much as he tries. This is the only King he has ever known. 

“Do you feel the same?” he asks after a long moment. 

Thomas offers him a bleak smile. “I cannot leave him,” he says. “We are bound too tightly for that – his trials are my own, and his triumphs the same.” His gaze flicks to the retreating figures. “Does it matter how I feel?”

William can offer no response. Inside his pockets, his hands clench, and he forces himself to think of his study, with its tall, thin windows that let streams of golden light inside to pour over the books, and the green fields that stretch beyond. 

It offers slim comfort, but the kingdom is all that he has left. The land cannot betray him. 

He only wishes that the knowledge didn’t make him feel so lonely. 

 

-

 

 

V.

 

His hauberk slips from his hands to the floor and he leaves it where it has fallen, listening to the sound of metal on stone dissipating in the small space. With a gentle sigh, he leans back against the wooden door behind him. Before him lies a dark stairway, spiraling up into the tower that he has claimed as his own within this castle.

He did not stop to see William on the way to the tower, and Thomas has long since begun avoiding his presence. He took Catherine back to her home in the South on the day he raised Henry, and swore never to come to her again.

This war is over, and before it had ever truly begun. He has brought Henry Barbatus before his father and laid the boy out before the traitor’s feet. The raven is the only flag flying over the North now. 

He should feel relieved, but instead he feels nothing. 

In his pocket is a heavy key, cast from iron and made to withstand any magic. He reaches into his tunic to grasp it, and draws it out slowly. It really is a clumsy thing, roughened around the edges and with a single flat tooth sticking out. Yet if he uses it to lock the door behind him, none but he will be able to open it. 

He has ruled for three hundred years. Perhaps it is time.

He turns and slides the key into the lock, then turns it swiftly to the left. There is no sound from the lock; magic surges around and through him, rushing out through the iron and into the door. He reaches out and his palm hits the door, steadying him as he sags. Through slitted eyes, he watching the dark line that marks the door’s edge lighten and blur, until the door itself is gone, and only the wall remains. 

His hand falls, the key gone as well. The wall before him is flat and blank. He cannot feel the castle beyond, or the lives within it. His advisors are gone, his knights vanished. He cannot feel the ladies of the court or the ravens on the tower. There is only himself, and his magic.

It is the first time in three hundred years that he has been so alone. 

He turns away from the wall and all that lies beyond it and slowly, with stooped shoulders, begins the ascent to his tower.


End file.
